In the third and final part of WAND Investigates' series on the dangers of cyberbullying, we explore the tools and conversations parents must have to keep their kids safe online.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WAND) - Teenagers are connected like never before, through social media and messaging. But instant access online can also expose kids to severe cyberbullying, sextortion and exploitation.

"When parents think my kid would never do that- that is when their kids are going to be victimized," retired detective Richard Wistocki told WAND News.

WAND News sat down with the Hughes family in Springfield. They lost their 15-year-old daughter, Hannah, to suicide in June 2025. Her parents said it came after years of severe cyberbullying. They shared their story in the hopes of saving another life.

WAND News sat down with the Hughes family in Springfield who lost their daughter to suicide last June after years of severe cyberbullying.

"We lived in a somewhat nice little community over in Grand Valley Village when she was little. She had cousins and family and friends. I mean, everybody had children about the same age growing up with her over there," Jonathan Hughes told WAND News.

Jon described Hannah as a brave, free-spirited little girl.

"She wasn't really afraid of a whole lot. She had no problems messing with frogs and going and looking for earthworms, bugs. It didn't matter to her, either," Jon explained.

As she got older, he said her love of exploring the outdoors and fishing with dad shifted to music and the arts.

"She was a heck of an artist. When she was little, she used to do clothes designs and draw clothes designs and, of course, makeup and everything," Jon said, "Like she was just almost everything she put her hands on — she was good at."

He said that as Hannah was entering junior high, she dreamed of going to college to become a counselor and work with children.

"She [was] just [a] beautiful soul, you know, the way she treated everybody as a whole and the way she was towards, you know, just life and animals and stuff," Jon told WAND News.

But around that same time, Jon said the bullying and cyberbullying started.

"Some of it started in the schools, like she had several kids, didn't like her, [and] that would target her just because she stood her ground. You know, she stood up for her friends," Jon added.

He said Hannah got suspended for getting into a fight with other students at Jefferson Middle School. Soon after, he said the fighting moved online.

"The kids are using the group chats to one target, one another — Snapchat, TikTok, things like that," he explained.

Around this time, Jon said Hannah asked to move in with her biological mother. He thought a fresh start and a new school might be best for his 13-year-old. But he said things only got worse.

"Then, when I had found out that my daughter had expressed to me that there were some pictures that were involved, and there were some videos, that these kids had made threats to my daughter to send them to me and to tell me the truth about her and stuff," Jon explained.

Jon went to her school to talk with administrators. District 186 told WAND News it cannot comment on the specifics of Hannah's case or any possible disciplinary action against students, due to privacy laws.

"The last phone call I got from her was just — it was hard. So when I [explained] to me what was going on, she just kept saying that I couldn't fix it. She knew that I'd go as far as I could go. And, when I told her on the phone that, you know 'well, I'll talk to your mom about it.' Please don't, because it would just make things worse. Don't go out of school and make things worse. Don't do this. It'll make things worse," Jon explained.

He said there were also issues in her new home, and he knew Hannah was unhappy. But he only later learned how severe the cyberbullying had become.

"They sent my daughter days prior to that, a meme of a Rice Krispies cake with Benadryl on it and said, 'Oh, what's wrong? Hannah, are you not hungry? Your plate looks full' or something like that," Jon said.

The meme refers to a social media trend called the "Benadryl Challenge," where teens take a large amount of the allergy medicine to hallucinate. It's easy to overdose, and Jon believes these bullies were goading Hannah into taking her own life.

On June 25, 2025, Hannah died by suicide after taking a lethal dose of Benadryl.

"It was within hours, it wasn't days — it was an hour — these kids got on, Snapchat and whatever else social media, lemon8 and TikTok or whatever, and was just going buck wild. They were telling my daughter's friends to go kill themselves. One child made a comment of 'Hannah got smoked cuss word, I'm a pack Hannah up in that Hannah pack and smoke her,'" Jon explained.

The violent words have left Jon and his family reeling since her death.

"The first thing is that parents really need to take a good look at themselves and take a good look at their children," Jon said.

While he acknowledged his daughter made mistakes, he said no child should experience the horror Hannah went through.

"I've had not one break from it, and I just keep telling myself that there has to be some good to come from this. Because if I give up and these kids see me give up, they're going to feel like they don't have anything else to stand for," Jon said.

He's now made it his mission to raise awareness among parents. He's also working with local organizations to create safe spaces for teens to gather in Springfield. His message to kids and parents: take this problem seriously.

"You know, there's always somebody to talk to. There's always somebody that you can go to, you know, and, with the parents, don't take none of it lightly. You know, if they tried to do it, then do something about it, because the chances are that they try that one time, might be that all it takes," Jon said.

The Sangamon County Coroner reports three children, under 17, died by suicide in 2025. The Champaign County Coroner also reported that three children died by suicide. The Macon County Coroner reported no suicides among those under 17 last year, but one has been documented in 2026.

If you or someone you know needs help, call 988 any time or day.

District 186 said any student or parent wanting to report a bullying incident can do so here or through the Safe 2 Help website. A district spokeswoman said Peace Rooms are available at each high school daily. Licensed social workers and psychologists are available to help students any time during the school day.

While the district will not say whether any students were disciplined after Hannah's death, WAND News has learned that not face criminal charges. In our series, we will continue investigating why and how a proposed bill at the Illinois statehouse could crack down on the most severe forms of cyberbullying.

Limitations of the Law

WAND News spoke with several parents who had similar experiences to Hannah and the Hughes family. In all the cases, there was an investigation by the school but not by police. WAND Investigates dug into the limitations of the law to hold students accountable for online harassment.

Schools investigate cyberbullying, but police often cannot. Here’s how a new Illinois bill could give authorities more power in the second part of WAND Investigates' series on the impacts and dangers of cyberbullying.

"We really have a major problem, being that we do understand there is cyberbullying. But with cyberbullying, usually it has to have a sexual connotation to be a crime. The problem is, if I am the bully and I'm telling you to go and kill yourself, that's not a crime," Sen. Linda Holmes told WAND News.

A state's attorney and retired police detective came up with the idea to change an existing state law, Harassment by Telephone, to add the phrase "electronic communication."

"So we stop the suicides, so we stop the self-harm. If we have this power to do it in an appropriate way. How many kids can we save?" Richard Wisktocki postured.

The retired detective has been investigating cybercrimes his entire career. Last school year, the Illinois State Board of Education started requiring school districts to immediately investigate reports of bullying and cyberbullying. But Wistocki said there is a flaw in the process.

"Well, how are they going to do that? They don't have investigative powers if they bring in their SRO, and it's not a crime. I can't get a subpoena. It doesn't mean a thing until we pass harassment through our telephone harassment and or electronic communication," Wistocki explained.

If passed, the new law would allow prosecutors to go after anyone who repeatedly messages a person and causes "significant emotional distress." Suspects could be fined and even subject to jail time.

"Well, I think in cases we literally can be saving lives because if you are bullied and harassed to the point where you are constantly being told you're worth nothing, you should go kill yourself. Unfortunately, there are students [who] take that to that level and literally do kill themselves," Holmes said.

Senate Bill 2741 has passed out of the Illinois Senate and is currently being debated in the House Judiciary Committee. Fourteen state lawmakers, from both houses and both political parties, have been added as co-sponsors to the bill. WAND News will continue following the status of this proposed legislation.

Parenting in the Digital Age

WAND Investigates took a closer look at the tools available to parents to keep up with the fast-changing threats online.
 
"So I started my company in 2010 called Be Sure Consulting because I always found, like myself, telling parents, you can't believe what your kid says. You have to be sure yourself. Be sure, be sure, be sure," Richard Wistocki, retired detective and founder of BeSure Consulting, told WAND News.
 
Wistocki worked as a police officer for 28 years.
 
"So back then, we didn't know what an IP was. We didn't know what geolocation metadata was. We didn't know anything about internet crime," Wistocki said.
 
In 1998, he was working as an internet crimes detective. He said after tackling his first case on the beat, he joined forces with other police departments, eventually becoming a founding member of the Illinois Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC).
 
"So then, we started going to a conference in Atlanta and in Dallas. And so we started getting trained by Comcast, Myspace, Facebook, and they showed us what we needed to do in order to get the information. So, upon that training, we are catching predators left and right. Right in the advent of social media," Wistocki said.
 
Wistocki started to see trends in the way predators acted, but also found that educating students led to fewer arrests.
 
"So the more you educate kids and parents, the less victimization you'll have. Makes sense. Right? And that's what was happening. So I took that data, and I started to teach in schools all over the country," Wistocki said.
 
He now teaches about 300,000 kids each year, with his team of seven, helping kids and parents learn how to be safe online.
 
"Number one, parents suffer from a deadly disease that sets their children up for failure. This is called the NMK syndrome — not my kid. When parents think my kid would never do that. That is when their kids are going to be victimized," Wistocki explained.
 
He said every parent needs to have a technology talk with their children and keep an open line of communication.
 
"So when I ask students, I ask them how many of your parents had a technology talk that went like this: If you do anything on their phone, if you tell people where we live, if you cyberbully anybody, if you take bad pictures, you're going to be grounded, take your phone away. You're not going to see the light of day, they're not going to go [through] turns, and the door is going to come off the hinges of your bedroom if you ever try. Right. So when parents have a technology talk and I ask the kids, how many of you guys had a talk like that, 80% will raise their hands. Then the follow-up question comes. So if you get catfished or if you get sex. Snorted. Are you going to tell the parents? And they all say no, they would never," Wistocki said.
 
Wistocki suggests a method called the "Golden Ticket," where parents offer their kids a type of get-out-of-jail-free card if they come to the parents first.
 
"When we teach children, they have to know that it's okay to make a mistake, but you have to report it," Wistocki added.
 
Larissa May, founder of Half the Story and Gingo, said this kind of open communication is the foundation for keeping kids safe online.
 
"You can stalk your kid to death, but the most powerful technology in the world that parents have is trust. And trust is a relationship; it takes effort. There is no easy button when it comes to parenting in the digital world, as much as we want to believe that there is," May explained.
 
May created the nonprofit #HalftheStory after almost losing her life to depression as a teen. She said at that time she was spending up to 12 hours a day on the screen.
 
"It wasn't because I wanted to be a bad student. It wasn't because I wanted to be a bad kid. It was because I was so overwhelmed by my emotions that the only place I knew how to deal with them was the digital world," May said.
 
She said the key to protecting children and making them better digital citizens is pausing for connection.
 
"We are so quick to want to blame the box — which is technology — and rip it away. But what we're doing in that moment is missing the opportunity for a real moment of support, emotional understanding and trust," May added.
 
May encourages parents to ask their children about the content they're watching online, and why.
 
"Try to get to the root of what is going on instead of looking at their screen time, look at what's on their 'for you' page on their TikTok or their Instagram. The content that is being fed to your child will tell you so much more than the number that we're all trying to hang our hats on," May said.
 
But she insists parents should also set clear boundaries with technology and monitor it frequently. May is also developing an AI app, Gingo, as a resource for parents.
 
"Because it is the wild, wild web, and I think, quite frankly, the challenge is that technology is moving faster than the human mind," May explained.
 
The app helps parents keep up with the fast-changing world of AI and social media trends. It's designed to help parents have age-appropriate conversations ranging from bullying to pornography to spotting deepfakes.
 
"AI is moving 100 times faster than social media platforms did. I firmly believe that knowledge is power, and the place that has the most upstream effect is by educating young people before they get their devices," May said.
 
Both May and Wistocki offer guides for parents, teachers and school districts online, filling an important gap in the digital space.
 
"We have to go to different measures to actually change our ecosystem because technology is changing humans and our systems need to change, too," May said.

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